Young Writers Society

Hello Traves, my old friend!

I'm glad I'll be reviewing a villanelle. This is the first time, I'll be doing it and it will definitely be a learning experience for me.

Here is my review :

I like how the whole poem has pastoral/rustic/countryside-folk overtones throughout the length. It's a beautiful theme you have come up with, at the same time it honors traditional villanelles.

broken-in

This is a lovely word, that you have used there, sometimes these small simple decisions amplify the beauty of poetry.

and sometimes, that’s all there is to it.

This refrain has a nice alliteration, what makes it better is a combination of soft and hard 't' consonant sounds. I like this refrain except, at certain parts this refrain pushes me to a mental jog to identify pronoun-noun matchings. For eg

I’ve been here before like the moonbeam that laces

this night and sometimes, that’s all there is to it.

This sentence has 'this' and 'that' as a conjunction, an adjective and a pronoun in the same order, along with pronouns 'there' and 'it'. This becomes a small mental exercise for me to have it sorted.

for leaving homes behind [May be, we need a comma here.] this might not be it,

I realize. Only people fill others’ empty spaces

These lines are beautiful with their meaning.

My favorite lines and my interpretations. Correct me in a comment if I am wrong. :

An intense urge to mend a needless rift

left years ago, ends in imagined embraces

The character wished to make amends with someone for something done too old, he does it in imaginary embraces.

It blows in jagged parts of me that don’t quite fit

so I’ll look for sandpaper in the next town’s graces—

The character is leaving the town, and he feels himself to be an outcast, a pariah, conveyed by the phrase - "jagged parts of me that don't quite fit". He searches for sandpaper to fix himself, a symbol of peaceful refuge, in a different town [the guilt makes him use the word sandpaper, a correcting device, although he is just searching for refuge, he doesn't need to reshape himself, he needs a mold to fit in].

I loved the whole poem. All rules of villanelle have been perfectly followed. It's really subtle, and you have played with words magically, it gives a secondary pleasure to the reader when he/she/[other pronouns] deciphers what you intended to convey beneath layers of subtle abstractions. The theme is melancholic, but not blue-melancholic, a different shade altogether. It's melancholy set in yellow-countryside, a new and fresh theme for me. It was a wonderful experience both reading and reviewing.

Keep writing!

Hi Traves! Happy Review Day!

I absolutely love villanelles so I obviously couldn't resist clicking on this.

I have to admit, I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to villanelle writing. That is, I do appreciate it when villanelles follow the prescribed rhyme scheme of ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA and have the five tercets and one quatrain. While poets always break the rules, there are times (like when writing a villanelle) that I feel the strict structure is important to follow because I feel the outcome is often stronger in the end. Clearly, you did something slightly different from the traditional villanelle which is totally fine, although you may want to keep in mind all of the above if you're thinking about strengthening this poem.

I disagree with tghamm99 (the reviewer before me) about de-capitalizing words and removing punctuation - really because the structure of the villanelle should be maintained, in my opinion, and that is where a lot of the powerful emotion you're trying to evoke here stems from. De-capitalization and minimal punctuation can be alright in experimental poetry and free structures, but not in this case.

I want to call into question the two repeated lines: "broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit" and "sometimes, that's all there is to it". They are good lines, I think, and I am more partial to the former than the latter. I think the latter line is weak and you may want to consider something that is more impactful and more clearly linked to the poem's theme(s).

There is some good vocabulary here that works to evoke strong images, such as the use of "jagged parts" and "ghosts of known faces" <-- this one was a particular favourite of mine. However, I think there are places where you could go deeper to create strong images and strong emotions, like in the third stanza.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting take on a villanelle. While I wasn't necessarily a fan of the different structure you have created for it, that could be a matter of poet's preference. This was a lovely poem and I hope you post more soon to YWS!

All the best,
Lav

Right off the bat, I loved the repetition of this line:

"broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit"

With poetry across all genres, repetition quite literally acts as a way of hammering home a specific point or emotion, which is exactly what you did well in this piece.

As for the tone, I like that it's very clear that we're dealing with the melancholy realization that our speaker is leaving their hometown and is intended to simply never look back. The sadness and intense emotion that come out of this poem are almost tangible, so kudos to you for accomplishing that.

You do a good job of providing descriptions of the speaker's experience in a way that highlight the desolation of the situation. Even the vocabulary that you use -- "jagged parts", "terminally ill", "the ghosts of known faces" -- are intentional and serve the purpose of evoking emotion.

In terms of suggestions, I would actually consider removing any and all capitalization; in a lot poems, I feel that writing all of the lines in lowercase can emphasize the feelings of innocence and sadness, but this is just a personal preference to consider.

The periods between stanzas can also be removed (but leave the spaces between stanzas -- I liked that each one read as its own block) but, because they don't take away from the actual reading experience, this is just a personal preference as well.

Write on!!